Friday, August 21, 2015

Lady Luck Hates Me

Did you ever get the feeling that luck in the game isn't really all that luck based? Almost as if blizzard has some program going on in the background that dictates luck and it really isn't all a function of the random number generator.

It probably all boils down to being lucky or unlucky but sometimes it feels as if it is you against the world. This week was one of those weeks, once again, were it felt like that. Being I had not raided on my hunter much in the past few weeks I managed to save up a few coins for this weeks run.

I rolled on two trinket bosses and every tier boss we beat as well as one other boss, kind of by accident, and won nothing. I've learned to expect that. But luck did shine on me, in a sense. The hunter tier token dropped off of two bosses. We never see the warrior, hunter, shaman, monk tier tokens. They are things of myth, they do not really exist, or so I was lead to believe.

So here I was all ready with my /roll on the first one and I get a 94. I am excited, I might actually get a tier piece. A 94 is a solid roll. The two shaman, two warriors, one monk and three other hunters of course were all rolling as well. I watch the rolls go by, a few 60s, an 80, but nothing even close until the last person rolls, the monk, with a 95. Son of a...

Such is the story of my life, we move along and the second tier trinket from the warrior, hunter, shaman, monk tier drops. Seeing one boss drop one is a miracle of all miracles but seeing two different bosses drop a tier piece I can roll on in one night is unheard of. That piece never drops.

I feel that after my 94, and loss that followed, that I wasted the only good roll I will see for a while. I hit /roll anyway and see a 90 pop up. Awesome, two good rolls in one night, this must be a banner day for me. The only other thing that dropped that I could have rolled on was a trinket with a gem slot off the second boss, which would have been really nice, but I rolled like crap on that one.

Being I am writing this post I am sure you can guess what happened on that tier piece. Yeap, someone rolled a 91. Once again I was beat by one. It has become the story of my life. Even when I have a good roll, I lose. Even if I see something drop I can use, I lose. While it is true RNG is RNG sometimes you can't help but think they system has something against you.

There is a new player in the raid, the girlfriend of one of the regulars. She has quickly become a very good player and is really working hard to get better and it is noticeable from week to week. She is getting much faster at responding to mechanics, she is getting better at her numbers. Heck it is rare to see someone with as little experience as she has (only 3rd week raiding) even approach 70% potential this quickly nevertheless getting to, and over, the 80% potential marker on some fights on the logs from last night.

So why do I bring her up? Something her boyfriend said on voice chat and a tin foil hat theory he has.

See, she has luck, luck beyond luck. I mean insanely sick luck. She goes to solo old stuff, the 1% mounts drop stuff, and she wins the darn mounts her first or second time in. She has received all the mounts, and multiples of each, from the big four rares on T2. She has won a piece off the world boss every single week since it came out. She has managed to snag 18 medallions of the legion. When she uses a coin she is rocking an over 50% win rate, even if it is not always something she needs. When she gets a tier piece, it is always either warforged or with a gem slot when she clicks on it. When the mythic dungeon week was around she got the best in slot trinket from the box, and during the dungeons every drop she got was a 705 piece. She is already rocking a 708 item level, basically 15 item levels higher than me, and she has only been playing 3 months. Three freaking months, do you believe that?

So his theory is this, because she is new to the game, the game is giving her a lot of stuff. It is letting her win often, it is trying to get her hooked. Just like the slot machines in las vegas, where you put in 20 bucks and it lets you win 40, but then sooner or later, after you have had a taste and are hooked, it stops letting you win and starts draining your money.

He says because I have been constantly subbed for such a long time and have remained active and I am always soloing old raids, there is no incentive for the game to give me anything to try and hook me. I am already hooked. So I am looking down the long road to getting things because they think I do not need to get things to keep me playing whereas she is still new so they are still feeding her all the lucky drops and luck with coin rolls and such. But once the system feels she is hooked enough, she will be in for the same hell I am. Okay, maybe not as bad, but not as good of luck as she has been having.

I must admit, it does make a little bit of sense. Thinking of it as something that would want to get you hooked so the easiest way to do that is to give you a taste of what it can be like when you win stuff. And quite honestly if I were coding the game I would do that exact thing, when someone was still new I would give them a luck buff, if you will, that is not is seen by anyone to try and get them hooked. It is actually pretty damn smart coding if it is true.

So perhaps the RNG is not really all that random but completely and 100% by design. The people it feels it needs to hook have more luck, the people it thinks are already hooked have less.

Or maybe random is just random and his theory means nothing. But it does make one wonder. When I am treated as if I pissed in lady luck's cheerios and she is treated as if she is best friends with lady luck, maybe there is a new player luck buff.

16 comments:

That is a terrifyingly ridiculous idea that I hope no company would...so I give Blizzard at least 50/50 odds.

The logical, stats orientated side of me says nope, just that nature of randomness.

And the rest of me says, wow, that make so much sense.

My luck is no where near as bad as you, but even I am green with envy towards her luck. No ill will towards her but wow, that kind of luck is amazing.

My own spouse has somewhat similar luck, although it is less consistent. But when it is running good: 1st run of firelands - ever - Pureblood Fire Hawk drops. I still don't have mine. Took less then 10 runs to get Azure drake. I still don't have mine. Things like that.

If I owned a company I would, but then again I am evil, so that is not saying much. ;)

Luck is luck, you either have it or you don't. I think what I hate worse than bad luck is that when you have a good streak and win a bunch it feels awesome but you know that means you will not win anything again for a while.

The feast and famine of it all really annoys me more than anything else. As much as it is awesome to win a 4 piece set in 1 week, it suck having to wait 16 weeks before that happens.

I think they should let the "basic" luck be a lot higher. It is logical really. People that win things are happy, people that are happy play more, people that play more pay more.

I am not advocating letting everyone get BiS in a month or even three, but giving them a piece or two each and every week would actually be good for the game. It would keep them coming back instead of being like me. Do you know what my best upgrade since HFC came out was? A tier piece from last tier. How sad is that?

In FF14, at least while leveling, everything feels like an upgrade so it always feels like you are getting something good. And even when you don't, as you can learn all professions, you can eventually disenchant everything you do not need.

Also being one character plays all classes, even if your archer gets a two handed sword, it is not a bad thing, it might be an upgrade for your warrior or marauder. So there is that additional level of "cool, this is good" even when it was nothing you really needed.

There's a fine line here. If you get the gear too quickly you get bored because there's nothing else to strive for, so you quit running. "I've got everything I can off these bosses, why should I bother."

You get no upgrades for quite some time, you get frustrated, grumpy and quit. "If I have to run this raid one more time and get bupkis, I am going SCReAM!"

I feel for ya. As I just mentioned, I've run BRF for the last month working on the legendary quest line, but getting nothing of value because I'm already wearing Tanaan epics. I still need to run it around another 2 weeks until I got those last 200 fragments... Sigh.

From a coding end, trust me, a first year coder can do it. It is not hard to skew things like that in the code.

From a game play situation, I've done similar things in stuff I have coded to give newbies a helping hand to start and to get them hooked and a couple of the game I worked for have done similar things. So it happens, a lot.

So yes, it is absolutely possible, you would have to be a willfully blind to think it is not.

STOP ROLLING FOR LOOT IN PREMADE GROUPSThis is LITERALLY your problem. Use epgp or loot council but for the love of all things good you will be so much happier if you arnt rolling against other people in your raid and your raid will be more successful if you get the loot where it needs to go. As too your question do I think it's possible blizzard is doing this? No that would require giving them too much credit they can't even make coherent business decisions about basic things like flying implementing these tin foil hat theories is beyond there capability.

Pure anecdata, but I had a character that I began leveling during Wrath and she became my luckiest of characters. Ran Stratholm and got the mount, first try, ran BT and got the shield and the helm within 3 tries, rolled on the shield in HoR as dps first time and got it, and I know there were other instances that trigger that feeling that she was lucky (fast gearing once she hit cap? I forget), and the only thing I can think of was that she was a tank every time I got an old content item. This would have been about the time LFD came out and there was a dire need for tanks, so I could totally subscribe to the idea that there's a luck kernel for each character and it's adjustable. Adjustable because she's not been lucky in a long time.

Sure they are. Random number generators (HEY, THATS THAT "RNG", you keep yakking about!) are probably set up to add "+1" to your account to remember you and what you roll on for every raid you go on. Easy enough to do and probably built in. With all the coding that has gone on with WOW, the changes, the add-ons, etc, it is prob so screwed up, that your are lost in the bits and bytes of the game.

Maybe if you do play another class, that cookie still follows you because it is tied to your account, not to your toons.

Hmm... plausible. After a year break at the end of MoP went and did a mount run with my honey. Had 3 mounts drop from end bosses and two legendaries. None dropped since then. Kinda tempted to take a looong break hah.

Considering raid things, for example, one of my 11 toons gets all the tier LFR loot in 2 runs. My main and one of my last toons walk LFRs, my main walking there more than others, and they can't get a grip on that f** weapon.

Considering mounts, I'm doing it for my main only. At Lv 90 in Pandaria I ran Karazhan with every CD for reputation. No horse. After I was Exalted, I tend to run Karazhan and Onyxia and Kael'Thas again and again, at least once in two weeks - no mounts.

But look at me coming to kill Malygos solo for the 1st time at lv 90. I came there just to see the raid - here's your dragon, darling. Look at me come to Firelands for the second time in my life - and Ragnaros gives me this firebird.

One of my guildmates devotes every week CD to run for mounts, 15 or 20 dungeons and raids, every week. She got the mount from Lich King recently, few hundreds of kills, and goes on with other mount runs, no luck.

The thing is to try the odds again and again, that's my opinion. Hundreds of times if you want it.